JORDAN BELFORT: The Wolf of Wall Street
The world’s most charismatic liar, Jordan Belfort.
Jordan Ross Belfort is a son of two humble accountants. He was born in a modest middle class house, into a modest life. What he later becomes however is nothing modest.
Jordan was born in New York, on July 9th 1662, albeit he grew up in Queens. He started his first business venture very early (while he was still in high school), the idea was simple, he would buy Italian ice cream and a cooler, and along with his friend sell it on the hot beaches during summer, and indeed it worked, he made 40 000 dollars. This was the first taste of big money Jordan had, and it probably engendered all that
followed.
What happened in the years after is history, it’s told gracefully in the movie made on him, “The wolf of Wall Street” starring DiCaprio.
Jordan starts off as a stockbroker, in Rothschild, but he gets laid off due to he black Monday crash.
He later tries a few more brokerage jobs, and with all that experience he goes on to found his own company, “STRATTON OAKMONT”.
With his innate charisma and undeniable ability to persuade anybody to buy anything he sold millions of dollars worth of stocks, his eloquence is best shown with “the sell me this pen” scene in the movie and in one of his speeches.
Belfort could sell shampoo to bald people,
he fully mastered the art of speech and decided to use it for his benefit. His company reached a peak size of a 1000 employees, during which time he was using a pump and dump scheme to sell worthless stocks. This strategy consists in first buying a lot of stock in a company, then artificially inflating value by selling it to a lot of people (pump), and then selling all of your shares (dump), this makes it so the worthless stock you bought low gets sold at an artificially raised price, of course after this exchange the stock plummets, and all the people that bought it lose all of their money. Jordan made millions using this exact strategy on penny stocks, which is a specific category of stocks valued under 5 dollars, it’s reported he made 22 million dollars in 3 hours, with a single pump and dump, the man literally manipulated the market and made it sing.
Of course all of these manipulations were not legal, and despite the fact that it afforded him a lavish lifestyle, it costed others their life savings. That’s why Jordan is a morally questionable man, he had an exceptional gift and he used it to scam people out of their money and lives, at his paroxysm he had yachts, cars, massive estates and wasn’t afraid of showing it.
However it all fell down a beautiful summer day in 1999, when the SEC, stocks and exchange corporation caught onto his shady schemes and launched an investigation. By 2003, he pleads guilty and is sentenced to four years, he only does 22 months at a good prison, and is sentenced to paying back the estimated amount he stole from the investors, 110 million dollars.
Today he’s paid only 10, and is now a motivational speaker leading a great life, not as lavish as it used to be but he’s definitely living more than comfortably, for reference the amount he frauded is estimated to be around 200 million dollars.
I did this article because his story is very interesting, he is a self made man, albeit a vicious one, he started off with nothing, and with pure charisma, intelligence and perpetual ambition he made hundreds of millions, i also love everything about stocks, and finance.
The real question remains,
How well does Belfort sleep at night?
After all he’s ruined thousands of lives. he could live in the grandest castle but nothing fills that black hole deep in one’s conscience. I honestly doubt he’s even doing good mentally, he pretty much sold his soul, his well being and honor for money, that’s also why Belfort is a very interesting person, it makes me question morals deeply.
Would you make that deal with the devil? Ruining that many lives, but living on mountains of cash?
ALTUN FIRAT.
